How Can You Market on Facebook?

Facebook has three tools (pages, ads, and groups) that can be used by anyone. Each of these options has its own purpose, and they can be combined for greater reach. 

 
Pages 

 
Facebook pages are similar to profiles, but for businesses, organizations, and public figures. Users can "Like" a page, which means they’ll automatically receive updates from that page in their news feed. Users also have the option to "Like" a page but not follow it. (Users also can follow some profiles.) 

 
While profiles require a mutual relationship between friends, pages can be liked by anyone, without a requirement for the page creator to accept a fan. They also don’t have a restriction on the number of friends/fans they can have (unlike profiles, which are limited to 5,000 friends). 

 
Advantages: Pages are free and easy to set up. 

 
Disadvantages: It can be hard to get a foothold and build a fan base with a page. 

 
Ads 

 
Facebook offers a fantastic targeted advertising platform. You can create ads targeted at specific geographic areas, ages, education levels, and even the types of devices used for browsing. Facebook also lets users close ads they don’t like and "Like" a page right beneath an advertisement:
 

Advantages: Ads have powerful targeting parameters. 

 
Disadvantages: Ads can get expensive, depending on your goals. 

 
Groups 

 
Facebook groups are similar to discussion forums, but with additional features that pages and profiles have (like a wall). You can create groups related to your industry or product offerings as a way to reach out to potential customers.

 
Advantages: Groups are free and have high levels of engagement. 

 
Disadvantages: Groups can be very time consuming.  

 
How to Market with Pages 

 
Facebook pages are the simplest, easiest way to get started marketing with Facebook.

They’re free, relatively easy to set up (at least in their basic forms), and incredibly flexible.

There’s not much of a downside, either. 

 
Unfortunately, many companies don’t use them to their full potential; or worse, use them badly. These guidelines will help you avoid making those mistakes. 

 
Profile Photo and Cover Image 

 
Your profile photo should be your logo. Simple as that. 

 
The cover image is a different story. It’s really up to you to decide what to put here. Some use photos of employees, while others use fancy artwork and put their contact information in the cover image. Pick a photo that will enhance your page and draw the eye of your visitors.

 
“About” Section 

 
The "About" section is prominently placed right below your company logo. This is your chance to tell anyone coming to your page what your business does. 

 
Make sure you put good information here, telling people what you’re company does, why you’re different, and other interesting details. If you can, take the time to write it specifically for your Facebook audience. You can copy the text from the "About" page of your website or blog, if you’re in a pinch. Be sure to fill in all of your data under "Basic Info."

 
Just remember to keep it friendly and informal. A casual tone usually works best on Facebook. Here are a few good examples: 

 
HubSpot tells us what they do and gives a contact method:  

 
WP Engine shares what they do and the number of customers they have, which helps establish credibility:
 

You also may want to put your hours of operation in the About section. 

 
Tabs 

 
Tabs are the little squares that sit to the right of your About section. Here are ESPN’s tabs:  

Facebook allows you to use up to 10 application tabs, known to Facebook admins as the "Favorites" section. Photos and Likes are required tabs. You may move the Likes tab wherever you wish, but Photos must remain as the first. Your top tabs are set to a limit of four. 

 
Think about what the priorities are for your visitors. If you’re a physical store, you may want to make a tab for location. If you host webinars, perhaps you could use the Events tab to let people sign up and join your webinars. Social media is about engagement, so the more (and the more closely) you get your fans to engage with you, the better marketer you will be.

Basic of Facebook Marketing

Basic of Facebook Marketing

 

Facebook is big. As the largest social network in the world, it has more than 1.23 billion active users, 62% of whom log in on a daily basis. 

 
With such a large user base, ignoring Facebook really isn’t an option for most marketers. You can bet your ideal market is using Facebook nearly every day. The question is: how do you target all of those users with your marketing? 

 
The good news is that the Facebook advertising platform allows you to zero in and specify the type of people you’re looking for. You can target by location, demographics, and interests. 

 
In this guide, I’ll show you the basics of how to use Facebook to your advantage. The guide is aimed at the beginner who wants an introduction into marketing their business on the world’s largest social network. 

 
Who’s On Facebook? 

 
Facebook may have started out as a social network for college students, but, by now, nearly everyone with an internet connection is using it. The minimum age requirement is 13, and there is reason to believe it is being used by all other age groups. 

 
Facebook doesn’t publicly release data on their most popular age group, but a survey by Pew showed that social networking is most popular with the 18-29 age group. Its popularity decreases with age. It is least popular with those 65 and older. 

 
I can assure you that, no matter what age group you’re targeting, there will be more than enough of those users on Facebook.

Brainstorming Content Ideas

Brainstorming Content Ideas

 

Though the list of content types will help you determine what content pieces you want to create, coming up with topics for your content is another challenge you'll face. Content creation takes time, lots of brainstorming, and research. To help you get started, here are a few brainstorming tips to remember: 

 
1) Let your mind wander. 

 
Brainstorming shouldn't be restricted; you never know when a great idea is going to come your way. Let your mind be free and relax. Avoid stressing out during the brainstorming session. If you do, it's time to take a break and come back to brainstorming later. 

 
2) Brainstorm with others. 

 
From your team to consultants, you can brainstorm with other people and bounce ideas off each other. You don't have to come up with creative ideas on your own, and it's best if you don't. When you brainstorm with others, you can see your ideas at different angles as well as your team members' ideas. 

 
3) Use tools to help you come up with content ideas. 

 
If you don't have the luxury of brainstorming with others or you'd like another way to brainstorm content ideas, tons of tools are available to help you create content topics. Several ones include: 

 

• HubSpot's Marketing Grader: HubSpot's Marketing Grader is a great tool to use when you want to see where you're at with your marketing. From your blogging efforts to your social media marketing, Marketing Grader grades vital areas of your marketing and sends you a detailed report to help you optimize and improve each area. With this tool, you can figure out how to make your website more SEO-friendly and discover new content ideas.

 

• What To Write: Get your mind gears going with What To Write's unique content idea generator! This tool asks you questions that will help jumpstart your brainstorming. It also generates several blog post ideas for you after you've completed the questions, so you can use those ideas in your content marketing plan. 

 

• HubSpot's Blog Topic Generator: Get blog post ideas for an entire year with HubSpot's Blog Topic Generator. All you need to do is enter general topics or terms you'd like to write about, and this content idea generator does all the work for you. 

 

• Feedly: This popular RSS feed is a wonderful way to keep track of trendy topics in your industry and find content ideas at the same time. 

 

• Buzzsumo: Discover popular content and content ideas at Buzzsumo. Buzzsumo uses social media shares to determine if a piece of content is popular and well-liked, so this information will help you see which content ideas will do well. 

 

• Content Forest: Content Forest offers free tools, which include Top Content,Keyword Kiwi, and Content Ideator. These tools will help you find popular content from your competitors, effective keywords to use in your content, and great content ideas all in one spot.

Content Ideas for Your Content Marketing Plan

Maintaining a steady stream of content that's unique and interesting to your target audience is a challenge. But with a big dose of creativity (and a little help from content idea generators), you can create content that's not only valuable to your market, but also stands out from the sea of information. 

 
44 Fantastic Types of Content 

 
There are tons of options out there for content you can create. Forty four content types are outlined below, so look through the list and see which ones would make a perfect fit in your marketing plan. 

 

The Content Marketing Plan

The Content Marketing Plan

 

Every content marketing plan should include the basics. Think of them as building blocks for the foundation of your content marketing. Make sure you outline the following essentials in your marketing plan:  

# Goals or Mission 

What's your aim for developing a content marketing plan? Why do you want to produce content and create a content marketing plan? Know your goals before you begin planning?

 
If you recently started your business, avoid producing content just because you think you should. You may not be using content effectively -- and you don't have time to waste on tactics that aren't delivering results for you. 

# Target Audience 

To develop a successful plan, you need to clearly define your content's target audience -- also known as your "buyer persona." 

This is especially important for those who're starting out and are new to marketing. By knowing your target audience, you can produce more relevant and valuable content that they'll want to read and convert on. 

If you're an experienced marketer, your target may have changed. Do you want to target a new group of people or expand your current target market? Do you want to keep the same target audience? Revisiting your audience parameters each year is crucial to growing your audience. 

# Types of Content  

Most people start out with blog posts, but if you want to venture out and try producing other content pieces, consider which ones you want to make. For instance, if you've been doing weekly blog posts for the past year, creating an ebook for all your blog posts would be a one way to offer information in a different format. We'll go over a bunch of the different types of content you can use in the next section. 

# Content Management  

Have a system in place where you can manage your content. A few vital parts of content management include content creation, content publication, and content analytics. Later, we'll go over tools you can include in your content marketing strategy to help you manage content.

Why you should turn articles into slides

Why you should turn articles into slides

Besides more and better traffic, what other reasons are there to turn articles into slides? Here are some:

• It’s easy. You’ve already done the exhausting brainwork of research, writing, development, and explanation.
  
•  It’s fast. It’s easy to waste time making slide presentations from scratch. If you have a presentation template and some handy images, it doesn’t take too long to place your article into a slide presentation.

• It has a high ROI. Considering the time that you spend flipping an article into a presentation, you’re getting a massive return on your investment.

• It produces traffic from a different source. SlideShare visitors may not be familiar with your brand or product. Delivering content via SlideShare is a great way to access new sources of traffic.

• It offers searchable discovery. SlideShare users often search for their preferred topic using SlideShare’s search bar or categories. The content they see is the content they want. The advantage for you is targeted and relevant traffic.